Boise’s bike riders want a Greenbelt-to-North End route. This is ACHD’s answer

The Ada County Highway District plans to establish a corridor on 11th Street to help bicyclists travel safely and easily through Downtown between the Boise River Greenbelt and Camel’s Back Park in the North End.

This bikeway is just a concept for now. The district hopes to flesh it out by next fall, design it in 2020 and finish construction in 2021, ACHD senior transportation planner Brooke Green said in a telephone interview..

The district is asking for public input on the project. You can comment here.

The 1.8-mile 11th Street Bikeway would be the latest in a series of bicycle corridors the district is building on streets across Ada County.

The goal is to provide a network that bicyclists can access conveniently from their homes, jobs and other destinations, Green said.

They’re not bike lanes, though many of the roads they’re on have bike lanes. Instead, they are a collection of equipment and design changes meant to make streets safer and less stressful for cyclists. They include extended curbs at street corners, crossings designed especially for cyclists, painted symbols on the road to let drivers know they’re on a route that caters to cyclists, special signs and other installations.

“We’re not moving away from arterials [major streets] and collectors [moderate-volume streets] and bike lanes,” Green said. “What we are trying to do is complement those.”

A north-south path connecting the Greenbelt to the North End through Downtown has been on bicyclists’ wish list for years. Green said planners picked 11th Street because, unlike most Downtown streets, it offers an almost unbroken route.

The one blockage is between Boise High School and a field just west of it. Green said the highway district is working with the Boise School District on a plan to extend the bikeway through that one-block stretch.

Much of 11th Street already has bike lanes. The highway district likely will augment them with special street crossings, Green said. A few feet before the intersections, handles extend into the bike lanes from poles sticking out of the sidewalks. The handles have buttons — like the ones pedestrians use — that cyclists can reach without dismounting. Pushing the button makes lights at the crossing flash to alert oncoming drivers.

“In any bike facility, it’s the crossings that are dangerous,” Green said. “People get hit by cars more in crossings than they do down the road itself.”

The district wants to avoid eliminating parking spaces, Green said. It hasn’t estimated the project’s cost, she said. That will come into focus as the list of improvements becomes clear.

Four bikeways have been finished. They are:

▪ Leadville Avenue Bikeway, which runs east of Broadway Avenue from Linden Street just north of Federal Way to the Greenbelt. The Leadville Bikeway cost $725,000.

▪ Shamrock Bikeway, which traverses West Boise roughly along Shamrock Avenue between DeMeyer Park and Executive Drive.

▪ Shoshone Street Bikeway between Canal Street and Crescent Rim Drive.

▪ Cassia Street Bikeway between Robert Street east of Vista and Franklin Park Drive east of Bishop Kelly High School.

BoiseDev.com first reported the district’s plan for the 11th Street Bikeway.

This story was originally published November 15, 2018 at 2:56 PM.